New Delhi: The counting of votes began in Room Number 63 at the Parliament House here on Thursday to decide the winner of the race to the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
National Democratic Alliance’s Droupadi Murmu was pitted against the Opposition’s joint candidate Yashwant Sinha in the 16th presidential election, which saw 98.91 per cent elector turnout on Monday.
While Odisha’s daughter Murmu is almost certain to win, the focus is now on how many MLAs have voted for her. While Cuttack-Barabati MLA Mohammed Moquim on Monday announced that he voted for the NDA candidate, leaving his party red-faced, the BJP has claimed that another Congress MLA also cast the ballot in her favour.
Responding to Congress MLA Santosh Singh Saluja’s remark that BJP and BJD are two sides of the same coin, opposition whip in Odisha Assembly Mohan Majhi on Wednesday claimed that not only Moquim but another Congress MLA also voted for Murmu. “This will become clear during the counting of votes tomorrow,” he added.
Congress has refuted this claim. “The remaining eight MLAs voted for Sinha. Instead, speculation is doing the rounds that two to three BJP MLAs from the state voted for the UPA candidate,” Jeypore MLA Taraprasad Bahinipati said.
In Odisha, 145 members of the 147 legislators, including Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Congress legislature party leader Narasingha Mishra and all state ministers, exercised their franchise in Room No-54 of the State Assembly. Leader of opposition (BJP) Pradipta Kumar Naik, who is undergoing treatment at a private hospital for post-COVID complications in Delhi, arrived in Parliament in a wheelchair with an oxygen cylinder to cast his vote.
The lone legislator, who abstained, was Chilika MLA Prasanta Kumar Jagadev.
Notably, the BJD along with one independent MLA and an expelled BJD MLA had announced their support for Murmu, a tribal leader from Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district. The ruling BJD has 112 MLAs in Odisha Assembly and two among them have been expelled, while the BJP has 22, Congress nine and CPI-M and Independent one each.
The new President will take oath on July 25.
